A satellite pays its winners in seats rather than money: a $100 satellite might award one $1,100 seat for every eleven entrants. It is how a $5,300 EPT Main Event or a $10,400 WPT World Championship fills with players who would never post that buy-in from their own pocket, and why the tournaments on this site all advertise a satellite schedule around the main draw.
Price the seat before the poker. Eleven entrants at $100 + $10 pay $1,210 for one $1,100 seat: the fee is 9.09% of the money put in, and it is taken whether or not you win. A satellite that collects more per seat than the seat is worth, or that quietly pays the last seat in cash at a discount, is priced worse than it looks.
The strategy is unusual because the prize is flat. Once the field is down to the number of seats plus one, every seat is worth exactly the same and first place is worth nothing extra, so the correct play at the end of a satellite is often to fold hands you would never fold for cash, including aces. That is the purest case of ICM on the felt: chips you could win add nothing once you are safely in a seat, and chips you could lose cost you the whole seat.
Two things to check on the flyer. Whether the seat is transferable or convertible to cash, which decides what you actually won. And whether unused seats roll into the next satellite or vanish, which decides how hard the last seat is fought for.
Where the numbers come from
- Rake and the tournament fee
- ICM, and why a satellite ending is not a cash game
- The 2026 tournament calendar
Related terms in tournaments
- ICM, Independent Chip Model: the conversion from tournament chips into real money value.
- Rake, The house's cut of each pot, or the fee on a tournament entry.
- Guarantee, A minimum prize pool the organiser commits to regardless of entries.
- Freeroll, A tournament with no entry fee, or a situation where you cannot lose but might win.
- Bubble, The point at which the next player eliminated finishes just outside the money.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.